A powerful story of exile
Written by Cristy Lefteri, The Beekeeper of Aleppo explores diasporic trauma during the Syrian civil war. It follows Nuri, a beekeeper from Aleppo (Adam Sina), and his wife Afra (Farah Saffari), an artist losing her eyesight after their son is killed in a bombing. Forced to flee to Syria, the couple took their journey across Turkey and Greece, searching asylum in the UK, which means they need to directly face the Border Control, the Home Office and the NHS.
Although I have not read the original novel, this story does remind me of The Kite Runners as both profoundly undergo displacement and forced immigration during war, and how such upheaval can reshape and transform humanity. While I do not doubt the depth of Lefteri’s writing, this theatrical adaptation, scripted by Nessrin Alrefaai and Matthew Spangler, directed by Anthony Almeida and Miranda Cromwell, and produced by Nottingham Playhouse, leaves more perplexity than clarity.
Ruby’ Pugh stage design presents two sculpted mounds with two door-way entrance and a window, sketched by a skeletal framework covered by a projection scrim. While the projection helps to situate the place of action by projecting “Home Office,” “NHS”, “Athens” “Aleppo” with doodle-style drawings, they do very little to streamline the narrative, nor go hand-in-hand with director’s blocking for the ensemble. The design also hinders the scene transitions, leaving the storytelling much chopped up. For instance, one of the story’s central plot-twist, the truth behind the existence of Mohammed(Dona Atallah), a refugee boy the couple meet during their exile journey, is signifcantly flattened due to insufficient foreshadowing in directorial decisions. Likewise, the dangerous “boat crossing”, which should be climatic and visceral, concludes the first half as surprisingly lukewarm and underwhelming.
This also weakens the story’s core metaphor of the bee and the beekeeper. The audience can certainly grasp the parallel – bees as communal and connecting, and the beekeeper as caring and guiding. However, the dramaturgical and directorial choices simply reduce it to a binary contrast of “happy past in Aleppo” vs. “hardship of forced immigration in the UK”. Even within that simplified duality, certain moments, such as Nuri describing his duties as a beekeeper to the Home Office officer, lose their emotional weight and struggle to reach the depth. Similarly, the officer’s questions feel illogical and fragmented. While this may reflect real-life UK bureau system, these quickly shifted questions lack a well-structured narrative end for Naru and Afra’s story.
The show ends with Nuri’s reunion with his cousin, Mustafa, brilliantly performed by Joseph Long, who provides most of the humour of the night, balancing Sina’s hyper-charged portrayal of Nuri. As the projection scrim falls down, revealing an English dusk on the backdrop. While I won’t doubt the book hinted trait of hope, this visual resolution hardly leaves any lingering resonance.